Family & Friends

Taking a Chance: How Monopoly taught me to be a better parent.

I am kind of a nerd at heart and I am pretty proud of it too.

I collect board games and video games for fun. I have game consoles going back to the Atari and Colecovision all the way up through the last gen systems, but my love for board games is even stronger. I have recent games as well as all the way back to older decks of cards from the 1920s to an old Monopoly set where the houses and hotels are made of wood and not plastic. I keep that one stored of course, but I do play the newer variations occasionally with my wife and kids. Let me be the first to tell you, playing Monopoly SUCKS sometimes. During our last play through it sort of hit me about why it really is the perfect game though when it comes to teaching lessons about parenting. For the purpose of this article, I will assume you either know or have played the game so I won't get into details there, but I will cover some of the aspects of the game that relate to my point.

Choice and Consequences

We roll the dice and begin to move our pieces. It's the basic tenants of a lot of board games of it's kind. We all roll differently and some get ahead while some get left behind. My son gets extremely frustrated when he isn't ahead in the game. He really is incredibly intelligent and a goal driven person. My daughter on the other hand is just excited to play. She likes being involved with the game, is a complete social butterfly and doesn't really care if she wins or loses as long as we are spending time together.

As we play and keep circling the board over and over, it reminds me of the kind of challenges each will face in life. They can't control the rolls that are given to them, but they can do their best to maximize on what they are given. Do they purchase a property to secure future gains or choose not to take that chance right now and hope it doesn't come back to haunt them. While in the game the players are stuck going in a square over and over giving them a possible chance to make up for earlier decisions, real life doesn't always give that opportunity. That choice left on the table can haunt someone if that opportunity is gone before we get a chance to come back to it again, IF that chance ever becomes available again to begin with.

I learned that I need to pass on to them the idea of taking advantage of opportunities when they come your way and not to waste potential. For way too long, I stayed passive and talked myself out of good things out of fear. I can't let them make that same mistake. I will have to teach to them based on their personalities to show them the potential paths to success as well as pitfalls they may face based on those same personality traits.

Patience

Monopoly is a LONG game to play. If you agree to sit down and play, you might as well plan to be unavailable for a few hours. Parenting is kind of the same, though the time is not measured in hours, but years or a whole lifetime. Monopoly is going to test your patience. It is going to make you mad. It is going to force you into decisions and deals you may not be happy with, but realize it needs to be done to move the game forward.

The moment my wife and I finally decided we were ready for kids, we each got excited in our own ways. I think a lot of parents fall into this trap, but you sort of think of the idealized version of what parenting is going to be like. You are going to have the perfect nursery, make sure they eat all the right foods, teach them life lessons you have learned along the way and many other thoughts of being a perfect parent. What you find is that being a parent is nothing like that at all. From the time they are an infant until they are long into adulthood, it is a constant test of your patience. You want them to do things a certain way and you refuse to negotiate. You are the parent and it should be your way after all, right?

At some point though, you start to wear down a bit. The game is getting a little too long and you are tired of having the same debates with the kids. Soon those little deals slip in. "If you eat your broccoli then you can have a cookie after dinner." You start picking your battles and suddenly those things that seemed real important before the kid came along seem less so now, just so you can go rest. It only gets worse the more you have. This is where you really need to work on your patience. It's so easy to get out of those good habits with them just because it is easier.

I learned that even if it is inconvenient at times, I still need to calm down, keep my focus and do things the right way. They are looking for me to lead them for now, but at some point they are going to do it on their own and I would rather they go forward with the techniques to do things the right way as well.

Winning and Losing

Eventually, someone has to win and of course that also means everyone else has to lose. Very few people walk away from playing Monopoly feeling good about what just happened. I think it ends up just being one of those conversations of "Yeah, let's not play that one again." For those who lost, you have such a time commitment put into this game and you didn't come out on top. The dice had to be rigged and your opponent had to have been cheating otherwise you for sure would have won. The winner usually feels everything was fair and they just won for their superior skills at board games.

For me, this was a great metaphor for our society as a whole, those who have and those who don't. For those who are in power, they were simply better at getting to the top than others, but everyone had a fair chance and they couldn't help that others couldn't figure it out. For those at the bottom, the game seemed stacked against them. They couldn't get those same opportunities because the winner was so far ahead that they didn't have a chance to even get to the good spots to advance.

When our games end, we all shake hands and say good game. We try to teach good sportsmanship and how to be both a good winner and loser. I think though, that while it is definitely easier for the person who has the advantages in spaces moved to get what they want first, they still have their own balancing act to maintain. For those behind, they have to find a way to take what they are given and find a way to the top. It's easy to take the victim mentality and lament their place, but nobody is just going to willingly give up on the game once they have the lead.

Monopoly is cutthroat at times, but so is life. I want my kids to have compassion and appreciate what they have, but I needed to learn that it shouldn't come at the sacrifice of ambition either.

Putting the game away

So the game is done and the pieces are put away and we all make a pact to never play that long of a game again. I would like to think that is sort of the ultimate goal, right? All of us in agreement that the game is not fun once you have played it and that in itself is the beautiful part of it. There are no more winners or losers at that point and the only negotiation was agreed to unanimously. There is no more need to be cutthroat.

Everyone is equal and happy in that moment. The way a game should bring us together.

I will see you again in another 30 years, Monopoly!
I will see you again in another 30 years, Monopoly!
Taking a Chance: How Monopoly taught me to be a better parent.
Post Opinion